Doctor Who
A children's show nearly buried the day after a presidential assassination became the longest-running sci-fi series on TV, thanks to a police box and a pepper-pot villain.
Published
Quick Facts
- First broadcast
- 23 November 1963, BBC Television
- First story
- An Unearthly Child, starring William Hartnell
- Created by
- Sydney Newman, with Donald Wilson and C.E. Webber; Verity Lambert was first producer
- Original run
- 1963 to 1989, then a 1996 TV movie
- Revival
- 2005, led by Russell T Davies and made in Cardiff
- The ship
- The TARDIS, stuck looking like a 1960s police box
- Famous monsters
- Daleks, created by Terry Nation and designed by Raymond Cusick
- First female Doctor
- Jodie Whittaker, first seen on 25 December 2017
The launch nobody noticed (nearly)
Doctor Who began on Saturday 23 November 1963, the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Newsrooms were still full of it, and a power cut had hit some viewers. The BBC repeated the first episode the following week. The idea came from Sydney Newman, the BBC's head of drama, who wanted something educational for the family audience between sport and pop music. Verity Lambert, then still in her twenties, was made producer and fought hard for the show. Waris Hussein directed the first story, An Unearthly Child, which opens at Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, east London, where teachers Ian and Barbara meet the mysterious Susan. It ends with the TARDIS in prehistoric times. William Hartnell played the first Doctor as a prickly, secretive old traveller. Nobody then expected the show to outlive him.
Why the Doctor can change his face
By 1966 Hartnell's health was failing, and the production team faced losing its star. Their solution became the show's greatest trick. The Doctor was an alien, so he could renew himself and come back as someone else. Patrick Troughton took over, and the idea later got the name regeneration. That single twist is why the series has lasted decades. Each new actor puts a stamp on the role: Jon Pertwee's action-hero years, Tom Baker's seven seasons with the long scarf and the jelly babies, Sylvester McCoy's spoons and question-mark umbrella. In the revival came Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker and Ncuti Gatwa. The man himself never gives his name. The title is a question, and the show has never really answered it.
The police box that outlived the police box
The TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, a name given by the Doctor's granddaughter Susan. It was meant to disguise itself in each new place. When the series opens in a 1963 scrapyard, it is already a police box. After the journey to prehistoric Earth, the crew notice it has not changed shape, and the show never bothered to fix it for good. The Doctor tries repairs now and then, and in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) it briefly adopts other disguises. The police box was a normal sight on British streets, a place to phone for help. As the boxes vanished, the blue shape became more famous as the Doctor's machine than as a piece of policing kit. The joke of a ship bigger on the inside has lasted for decades. The Daleks arrived in the second serial, in December 1963. Terry Nation wrote them and Raymond Cusick designed them. They turned a modest children's show into a craze, and they are the reason a generation says it watched from behind the sofa.
Sounds from a tape machine
The theme is one of the most recognisable pieces of British television music. Ron Grainer composed it, and Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop turned it into something no orchestra could play. She built it from tape manipulation and electronic oscillators, cutting and splicing by hand. The Radiophonic Workshop became the show's secret weapon, supplying the whooshes, hums and groans that gave a low-budget series its alien atmosphere. The grinding sound of the TARDIS taking off is still instantly recognisable.
Lost episodes and a long silence
In the 1970s the BBC wiped or discarded many old recordings to save space and money. Dozens of Hartnell and Troughton episodes disappeared. Fans have spent decades hunting for them, and in 2013 a haul of missing episodes was recovered from a relay station in Nigeria, including parts of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear. The original series ended in December 1989 with Survival, and was never formally cancelled so much as left to fade. Through the so-called wilderness years the show survived in novels, audio dramas, Doctor Who Magazine (launched in 1979) and fan societies. The 1996 TV movie with Paul McGann didn't bring it back, but it kept the flame going.
How Cardiff became Gallifrey
When Russell T Davies relaunched the series in 2005, he made it in Wales. BBC Wales' studios in Cardiff became the show's home, and the city's Cardiff Bay area became part of its geography. Roald Dahl Plass and the Wales Millennium Centre appeared on screen, including in the spin-off Torchwood. A Doctor Who Experience attraction ran in Cardiff Bay from 2012 to 2017. Scotland has contributed a long list of Doctors and companions. David Tennant was born in Bathgate, Peter Capaldi is from Glasgow, Sylvester McCoy from Dunoon, and Ncuti Gatwa grew up in Edinburgh. Tom Baker is from Liverpool and Christopher Eccleston from Salford, so the role has always spoken in a mix of British accents. The 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, was shown on 23 November 2013 in dozens of countries at once, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest simulcast of a TV drama. Disney+ carried the 2023 specials and the 2024–25 series internationally, though in October 2025 Disney announced it would not continue the partnership for future episodes.
Notable people
- Sydney Newman
- Verity Lambert
- William Hartnell
- Patrick Troughton
- Jon Pertwee
- Tom Baker
- Terry Nation
- Raymond Cusick
- Delia Derbyshire
- Ron Grainer
- Russell T Davies
- Christopher Eccleston
- David Tennant
- Peter Capaldi
- Jodie Whittaker
- Ncuti Gatwa
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